True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 222: Boni Ilagan
Aired: 2022-04-20
Duration: 01:14:36


=== Constitutional Conventions and Reversals (15:23) ===

[00:00:02]  All right, let's do this part first.
[00:00:03]  My name is Brace.
[00:00:04]  Hello, I'm Liz.
[00:00:06]  We are, of course, as always, joined by producer Young Chomsky, and this is Truinon.
[00:00:11]  Hello.
[00:00:12]  Hello.
[00:00:13]  Before we forget, there's a few things we need to get out of the way before we forget.
[00:00:16]  Number one, because I can see Young Chomsky's eyes boring into me.
[00:00:20]  I don't mention this.
[00:00:21]  There is some ambient noise in the background of our guests.
[00:00:25]  Guests.
[00:00:27]  You might recognize it from your sound machine that your girlfriend hates that you use.
[00:00:34]  Oh, interesting reversal there.
[00:00:35]  She's not using the sound machine.
[00:00:37]  No, it's always the guy.
[00:00:38]  Yeah.
[00:00:39]  Well, where I come from, the sound machine is the girlfriend, if you know what I mean.
[00:00:44]  But where do you come from?
[00:00:46]  The place where they, again, they just keep talking and don't let me finish my thought.
[00:00:51]  No, but there are African lovebirds in our guests' room, which I think is insanely charming.
[00:01:00]  And so if you're like, oh, I'm getting distracted by the beautiful chirpings of African lovebirds, don't listen to the podcast.
[00:01:07]  Or get distracted by it and then just hit pause, rewind, because you got distracted.
[00:01:12]  Or maybe get some pairs of your own.
[00:01:14]  It's okay to get distracted by the lovebirds.
[00:01:16]  They're lovebirds.
[00:01:17]  But then you just hit that old pause button, a little rewind, little 30-second hop over, hop on back, 30 seconds, start it up again, refocus exactly.
[00:01:29]  Well, Liz, we are taking, we are hopping on a little boat today and going down to the Pacific.
[00:01:35]  In fact, I read some.
[00:01:37]  Listen, I can't figure it out.
[00:01:39]  Some people think it's in Asia.
[00:01:40]  Some people say it's in the South or it's a Pacific Island.
[00:01:43]  To me, it's both.
[00:01:45]  But we are going down to the Philippines.
[00:01:47]  For those who do not know, there is an election coming up in the Philippines in early March.
[00:01:54]  Big election, exactly.
[00:01:57]  Where Bong Bong Marcos, aka Ferdinand Marcos Jr., but he is called Bong Bong Marcos.
[00:02:03]  We're not just calling him that, BBM, is running alongside Sarah Duterte, the current president Rodrigo Duterte's daughter.
[00:02:11]  The way the elections work in the Philippines is they have a separate election for, I mean, it's the same election day, but you vote for a president and vice president separately, which, by the way, I think they should do here too.
[00:02:24]  Chaos.
[00:02:26]  Yeah.
[00:02:26]  Kamala and Trump.
[00:02:28]  They should, you know what they should do here?
[00:02:30]  Switch it off every cycle.
[00:02:31]  So one year you vote for a joint ticket.
[00:02:33]  The next time you vote for separate.
[00:02:35]  Just keep everyone on their toes.
[00:02:37]  Yeah, that's good.
[00:02:38]  Because that'll, that'll, yeah, people are forgetting that'll lead some wacky combos.
[00:02:42]  I want to say that our guest mentions at some point during the interview the kind of reformist, classic reformist revolutionary split in his own resistance party movement, however you want to call it.
[00:02:58]  And the reformists classically, you know, they have all this constitutional, you know, thing, changes they want to make.
[00:03:06]  One of them being the term limits, of course, to the, you know, the presidency, particularly, you know, after the Marcos dictatorship, this was a huge point that there would never be, you know, you could only have one term limit only.
[00:03:24]  can never run again, aka that's why Duterte is not running again in this election coming up.
[00:03:29]  And yet, in classic reformist fashion, doesn't do what they think it's going to do.
[00:03:35]  You still got the same old characters coming back with a vengeance, fucking Brumer, you know, over and over again over there in the Philippines.
[00:03:44]  And yeah, Marcos's kid and Duterte's kid running unity ticket.
[00:03:51]  I mean, not really, although Bunbung is running with talking about unity a lot.
[00:03:56]  And they're running, yeah, they're running, they're running together.
[00:03:59]  Yeah, I got to say, if you're elected to any sort of public office in the Philippines, there is a 99% chance that every single family member you have, including cousins and aunts, will be elected to like everything from dog catcher to governor at some point within the next 10 years.
[00:04:16]  It is a country that has a small amount of very close-knit families running quite a lot of the country's affairs.
[00:04:24]  And that has not been great for it.
[00:04:27]  The guy we're talking to today is a pretty renowned figure in the Philippines for a number of reasons, for his activism, for his family, although for rather different reasons than Marcos.
[00:04:41]  And for being a playwright as well.
[00:04:45]  But yeah, we had wanted to mention that it does get rather heavy during certain portions of this.
[00:04:52]  This was somebody who was tortured during the Marcos regime and whose family had members killed and had a difficult go of it during martial law.
[00:05:04]  So if that is something that you cannot listen to for whatever reason, I would advise you maybe to wait until the next episode.
[00:05:11]  Well, we will be talking about the Boston bombing.
[00:05:15]  But yeah, what do we always say, Liz?
[00:05:19]  Well, I know that you always say this, but I don't want to say it.
[00:05:23]  But I will say it because I can't think of anything else, which is let's roll the tape.
[00:05:47]  All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the main part of the show.
[00:05:50]  We have with us today Bonnie Ilugin.
[00:05:54]  He's an activist, a martial law resistor, and the convener of the campaign Karma, Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law.
[00:06:04]  And we are very happy to have you with us today.
[00:06:06]  Bonnie, how are you doing?
[00:06:08]  I'm good.
[00:06:09]  Thank you for inviting me.
[00:06:12]  Thank you so much for coming.
[00:06:16]  We talked about this before starting the episode, but what we want to convey today is really sort of to personalize your experience and to blow it out and talk about sort of the larger political situation in the Philippines that that really represents.
[00:06:32]  And so I figured we'd start off by asking you about your own life because that seems pretty inextricably linked with the experience of the martial law in the Philippines.
[00:06:44]  And I know you were arrested in the 1970s and held for a couple of years.
[00:06:48]  And I figured I would just want to ask you about what led you to that point.
[00:06:52]  Like what was your own political experience throughout the early part of the Marcos era, pre-martial law?
[00:06:58]  And then what brought you into contact with the security services and why were they looking at you?
[00:07:04]  In 1969, I came to the big city that is metropolitan Manila from a province south of the city to enroll at the state university, the University of the Philippines.
[00:07:19]  I wanted to be a lawyer.
[00:07:22]  1969 was the eve of something that happened that defined my life.
[00:07:35]  I had been forewarned about being at the state university because it was, they said, some kind of a nest for agitators.
[00:07:47]  But I didn't care about that because, as I said, I wanted to be a lawyer.
[00:07:53]  But somehow I got attracted to that little movement that was starting at the state university in 1969.
[00:08:04]  There were groups of students that were conducting study sessions about the situation in the Philippines.
[00:08:14]  I joined one of the study sessions, not for anything else, but to be more informed so that I could answer more sufficiently the essay questions in my sociology subjects.
[00:08:32]  So you started hanging out with these people in order to get some extra credit in.
[00:08:37]  That's right.
[00:08:38]  Classic move.
[00:08:39]  Before I knew it, the interest about what was happening in the country got the better part of me.
[00:08:50]  By 1970, the storm that defined my generation's life happened.
[00:09:01]  It's called the first quarter storm of 1970.
[00:09:04]  First quarter, to mean the first three months of 1970, when student activists went out to the streets protesting the situation in the country.
[00:09:19]  You know, corruption, poverty, you know, every sort of problem that I thought was just beyond me.
[00:09:32]  But I joined the rallies and that was it.
[00:09:40]  After the first quarter of 1970, I became an activist without me really realizing that I had not been attending classes.
[00:09:55]  I had been more out in the streets and, you know, trying to find more about the situation among striking workers, among the urban poor, among the peasants in the provinces.
[00:10:13]  Well, because the Philippines at this time was a hugely poor country, right?
[00:10:17]  I mean, I know there were some urban middle classes and some, you know, these sort of capitalist centers in some of the cities, but a lot of the country I know was made up of urban, or excuse me, rural poor.
[00:10:28]  And was that the situation you were kind of looking at and realizing what was going on here?
[00:10:33]  That is right.
[00:10:35]  That is right.
[00:10:36]  So I saw the disparity between what the government officials, the politicians were saying about the country being developed, being progressive, while on the ground, people were living in extreme impoverishment, lack of services, things like that.
[00:10:58]  At that time, it was Marcos' second term.
[00:11:02]  The Constitution at that time allowed the president to have first and second terms.
[00:11:10]  It was his second and last term.
[00:11:14]  And word was around that he was trying to do something so that he could become president even after the constitutional provision.
[00:11:25]  Yeah, I know there was a pretty contentious constitutional convention around this time in order to amend the constitution to allow him to run for a third term.
[00:11:35]  Yes.
[00:11:38]  That's a good thing that you mentioned the Constitutional Convention.
[00:11:41]  During my time, the activist movement was divided into two camps.
[00:11:48]  On the one hand, there was the radicals, and I was part of the radical wing of the activist movement.
[00:11:59]  On the other hand, there was the reformist section.
[00:12:05]  The reformist section was saying that our last card for salvation was the Constitutional Convention, that everything would change if only the Constitution could be changed.
[00:12:21]  And even that last card of the reformist section of the activist movement, you know, was corrupted by the Marcoses.
[00:12:32]  The Marcoses bribed the delegates to the Constitutional Convention so that they could do away with the provision disallowing Marcos to become president for the third time.
[00:12:48]  And, well, that's 1971, as everybody knows.
[00:12:54]  In 1971, things happened quite fast.
[00:13:00]  There were events that created some kind of a situation that allowed Marcos to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.
[00:13:16]  So he did suspend the privilege of the writ.
[00:13:19]  Many among us were arrested.
[00:13:22]  And I thought I was one of those in the blacklist.
[00:13:29]  The blacklist is a military order of battle that listed wanted personalities.
[00:13:39]  So even before the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was declared, I decided to leave the university altogether and join the underground movement that was at that time starting to form.
[00:13:56]  I mean, what was that like?
[00:13:57]  I mean, that's a pretty big change to go from living on the university, attending these classes, or at this point, maybe not attending classes, to essentially being a fugitive on the run.
[00:14:07]  Yeah, that is right.
[00:14:09]  Well, it helped that many of us did the same thing.
[00:14:13]  Yes.
[00:14:14]  You know, we were many that left the university and started what we thought was our duty as citizens, young citizens of the Philippines.
[00:14:31]  And of course, Marcos lifted the suspension of the privilege of the Rit of Habeas Corpus, only to declare martial law in 1972.
[00:14:42]  So that was it.
[00:14:44]  More of us joined the underground resistance movement.
[00:14:50]  So you're underground for a period of about two years, as far as I know, right?
[00:14:56]  Right.
[00:14:57]  Well, a little less than two years, one year and seven months.
[00:15:03]  And I mean, I think, you know, to a foreigner and growing up, you know, sort of what I knew about the Marcoses is about two things.
[00:15:11]  One, that Imelda Marcos had a lot of shoes.
[00:15:14]  And two, that there was a period of martial law in the Philippines, which is, I think, when people talk about Marcos being a dictator, that's generally what they refer to.
[00:15:23]  I mean, there's quite a few other things you can put under that umbrella.

=== Prepared for Martial Law (02:25) ===

[00:15:26]  But, you know, the suspension of rights and also the militarization of large parts of society and making it essentially any opposition illegal de facto, if not always under the law.
[00:15:42]  I mean, did you see, you know, you were underground at this point, so I don't know how much you're seeing, but what sort of changes did you witness in Philippine society at this point?
[00:15:50]  Because prior to this, I mean, you guys had been essentially a non-colony or you'd gotten your freedom from America in 1946 and had had this sort of fledgling bourgeois democracy.
[00:16:04]  And then all of a sudden it's martial law.
[00:16:06]  The president's entering his third term.
[00:16:11]  What sort of outlook, I guess, did you have?
[00:16:14]  And what changes did you see happening in Philippine society?
[00:16:18]  Well, even before Marcos did what he did, he had a plan.
[00:16:25]  He had stacked up the cabinet, the government bureaucracy with military officers, retired and active military officers.
[00:16:36]  And word was around too that he would do something as drastic as that.
[00:16:46]  So we were sort of prepared.
[00:16:49]  But even as we were prepared in that sense, we somehow could not believe that Marcos would really declare martial law.
[00:17:06]  And before we knew it, even before Marcos spoke to the public about the declaration of martial law, he had unleashed the military to arrest all opposition personalities, you know, politicians, media people, church people, unionists, activists.
[00:17:36]  So when he publicly announced martial law on September 23, 1972, all the camps had been full with political detainees.

=== Camp Crame Torture (14:54) ===

[00:17:51]  Yeah.
[00:17:53]  And in 1974, you yourself ended up at one of these camps.
[00:17:57]  That is right.
[00:17:58]  That is right.
[00:17:59]  It was April 1974 when the military raided the underground house I was staying in with the journalist Josela Caba and UP Professor Adolores Stephens Feria.
[00:18:22]  Oh, you got arrested alongside a professor too.
[00:18:25]  That is right.
[00:18:26]  So we were three in the underground house.
[00:18:30]  The unit that got us was called the fifth constabulary security unit, one of the most notorious intelligence units in the military.
[00:18:42]  In the underground house, we were immediately manhandled.
[00:18:49]  I knew what was going to happen in a way, because even before we were arrested, we had learned about our comrades being arrested earlier and what they experienced.
[00:19:07]  But somehow, as I was being tortured right in the house, I couldn't believe that it was happening to me.
[00:19:18]  I felt numb.
[00:19:20]  Honestly, I didn't feel the pain.
[00:19:24]  I was numb all over.
[00:19:28]  I was dazed.
[00:19:30]  Yeah, I mean, there's sort of situations in life where you think that, you know, even though it's happening to you, it's like, this is in your head.
[00:19:36]  It's like, this is something that happens to other people, or this isn't happening to me right now.
[00:19:40]  Like, I'm sort of observing this from outside my body.
[00:19:44]  Right, right.
[00:19:46]  And at daybreak, the military unit that got us took us to Camp Crame.
[00:19:55]  Camp Crame is the general headquarters of the Philippine Constabulary.
[00:20:01]  I thought in Camp Crame the treatment would be different because it was the headquarters of the Constabulary, but I was completely wrong.
[00:20:12]  That was where the torture, you know, really, really happened and almost did me in.
[00:20:26]  Yeah, and the torture was most intense in the first few days, one week, I think, because we knew that our captors needed to squeeze information from us the earliest, at the earliest possible time.
[00:20:46]  At that time, we still had what they called tactical value.
[00:20:51]  After a week, we wouldn't have any tactical value at all.
[00:20:55]  So that was when the torture was most intense.
[00:20:59]  But you know, even after the first few days, the torture went on because the intelligence unit held on to us.
[00:21:15]  I mean, this is what they usually did during that time.
[00:21:21]  You are captured, you are tortured, you undergo intense interrogation, and after a week or so, you are transferred to a regular detention center.
[00:21:37]  A regular detention center is managed by regular soldiers who… Yeah, like a military prison or something.
[00:21:45]  Yeah.
[00:21:45]  Yeah, who were not part of the intelligence unit.
[00:21:47]  So they didn't care about intelligence matters.
[00:21:52]  But we were not transferred to a regular detention center.
[00:21:56]  Why do you think that was?
[00:21:57]  They thought we were high up in the hierarchy of the underground movement.
[00:22:09]  And so we experienced torture and dehumanization in the entire period that we were held by the intelligence unit.
[00:22:22]  By dehumanization, it's something like this.
[00:22:25]  For almost eight months, yeah, we didn't have a comfort, we didn't have toilets.
[00:22:33]  We peed in cans, tin cans, and did our thing on newspaper pages.
[00:22:47]  And we were about 20, 25 in that small cell, and everything was happening in that small cell.
[00:23:00]  It was only when a delegation of Amnesty International visited us in camp that we were moved to a building that was still under the intelligence unit, but already had, you know, Toilets.
[00:23:27]  Yeah.
[00:23:28]  So you were moved to a more traditional cell type environment.
[00:23:33]  That is right.
[00:23:35]  And I mean, were they even trying to get information out of you at this point?
[00:23:38]  I mean, yeah, like you mentioned, after a week, you know, there's really not much you could divulge to these people that would be of any use to them.
[00:23:45]  But at that point, it just seems like they would be just doing it solely to inflict pain upon political enemies of the government.
[00:23:54]  Yes.
[00:23:54]  Well, the intelligence unit regularly conducted operations.
[00:23:59]  And so every so often they would arrest more of us, seize documents.
[00:24:06]  And every time that it happened, we would be taken in their interrogation rooms and forced to decode the documents that they exist, identify people.
[00:24:18]  I got you.
[00:24:18]  Yeah.
[00:24:19]  How long did that back and forth go on for?
[00:24:23]  Oh, for the longer part of my detention.
[00:24:27]  Yeah, as you mentioned, when there were no more questions to ask, they would just, you know, inflict harm on us just for the fun of it.
[00:24:38]  One day when it was the anniversary of the Philippine Constabulary, so it was a festive, it was a festive day in the whole camp.
[00:24:48]  There was music, there were, you know, food and drinks.
[00:24:52]  And before the day ended, a group of soldiers entered our cells and tortured us for, you know, just for the fun of it, because it was the anniversary of the constabulary.
[00:25:08]  Jesus.
[00:25:09]  Yeah.
[00:25:09]  I mean, it's, you know, I know you mentioned that you were under detention for a couple of years.
[00:25:17]  I mean, how do you even stay, I guess, sane during all of that, right?
[00:25:21]  Because, you know, again, like you mentioned, they had lifted the writ of habeas corpus.
[00:25:26]  There was no, there had been no like jury trial or anything like that.
[00:25:29]  I mean, it just seems like you had totally disappeared in sort of the black morass of the intelligence services.
[00:25:36]  I mean, how do you keep, you know, if you're in a normal prison, you at least have like a date of parole or a date of release that you're looking forward to.
[00:25:44]  But in instance like this, I mean, what did you use to, I guess, to not totally lose sanity or hope or anything like that?
[00:25:52]  After some time, we were allowed to associate with one another in the camp.
[00:25:59]  For some time, we were incommunicado.
[00:26:02]  We were not even allowed to speak to one another.
[00:26:05]  But after a few months, that was when they decided we could, you know, go out in the corridor and do our macrame, things like that.
[00:26:20]  But we were not allowed breathing materials for some time.
[00:26:25]  And for some time, too, we were disallowed visitors.
[00:26:31]  But as I mentioned, when the Amnesty International team visited us, things changed for the better.
[00:26:41]  So after you said you were there for the majority of your stay, and then you were eventually transferred to a regular prison or a regular military prison?
[00:26:49]  No?
[00:26:49]  No, no, no.
[00:26:50]  I was released right from the intelligence custody of the intelligence unit.
[00:26:56]  My God.
[00:26:58]  And after one of the conditions for my temporary release was that I would report to the camp every week.
[00:27:09]  So you had to go back every week?
[00:27:11]  Yes, to tell them what I was doing for the last week.
[00:27:16]  Jesus.
[00:27:18]  And of course, the threats always hanging over you at that point.
[00:27:20]  It's like, well, you know, you come back here, we can just, you know, turn the key and you're locked inside again.
[00:27:26]  I mean, that's terrifying.
[00:27:27]  That is right.
[00:27:30]  You know, and from what I know of your story is you actually re-enrolled at UP at that point.
[00:27:35]  Yes, I did.
[00:27:38]  I did.
[00:27:38]  I think I felt that was the most sane thing to do under the circumstances.
[00:27:46]  Yeah.
[00:27:48]  Were you trying to become a lawyer again or did you have a different interest in this?
[00:27:51]  Because I would say at this point, I would have lost a little bit of faith perhaps in the legal system of the Philippines.
[00:27:57]  Yes.
[00:27:58]  Being a lawyer, you know, became part of a distant past.
[00:28:05]  I re-enrolled in a different course.
[00:28:08]  I took Philippine studies and discontinued political science.
[00:28:18]  But, you know, when I realized that it was my second chance at life, on the one hand, on the other hand, things had not changed even a bit.
[00:28:33]  I thought sooner or later I'd be doing the same thing all over again.
[00:28:41]  And so I didn't even care to apply for graduation after having finished all my academic requirements.
[00:28:52]  It was sort of just figuring like, oh, well, sooner or later, they'll just have me back in the military intelligence building.
[00:28:59]  Right.
[00:29:00]  I decided I should go back to where I came from.
[00:29:05]  Back home?
[00:29:06]  No, back to the underground movement.
[00:29:11]  Ah, I understand.
[00:29:12]  Yeah, because I know around this time, too, you lost your sister.
[00:29:15]  That is right.
[00:29:16]  And that's one of the reasons why the decision was not difficult for me to join, rejoin the underground movement.
[00:29:25]  A month or so after I was released, it was my sister's turn to be arrested.
[00:29:31]  No, not arrested, abducted.
[00:29:36]  She went missing.
[00:29:38]  We were informed that she was missing.
[00:29:41]  And my mother started looking for her in the various camps.
[00:29:48]  And every time that she did, the answer was no.
[00:29:52]  She was not in any of the military camps.
[00:29:57]  But I knew that my sister had been taken in because before she went missing, we were able to talk twice.
[00:30:08]  At that time, she was in the underground.
[00:30:11]  I felt bad about meeting her because I knew I was being surveilled upon and she was deep into the underground.
[00:30:21]  But you know, we had not talked for a long time and I decided to risk and met her and we did.
[00:30:32]  That was the first time, the second time we met again because she needed help.
[00:30:39]  She wanted me to find a safe place for them to transfer because some of their comrades had already went, had been missing.
[00:30:50]  And we said, yes, I will find, I said, yes, I will find a house for you.
[00:30:56]  We met, we decided to meet for the third time and she never appeared.
[00:31:02]  She never came.
[00:31:04]  God, yeah.
[00:31:05]  And so I mean, I can imagine you immediately knew what happened or thought you knew what happened.
[00:31:11]  But yeah, I mean, she was never found at any of the camps.
[00:31:15]  Never.
[00:31:15]  She was never found.
[00:31:17]  There were 10 in the group.
[00:31:22]  And two of the ten were found in a ravine in a province, mutilated, dead, of course.
[00:31:35]  And one was exhumed in a common grave in another province.
[00:31:40]  But my sister was never found to this date.
[00:31:46]  We knew, of course, we did our search, our research, and we knew that they were abducted by a special intelligence unit called Ground Team 205.
[00:32:02]  This was a special unit, a composite unit in southern Luzon.
[00:32:10]  It was led by a colonel, Alexander Galido, who even became general during the time of Corey Aquino.
[00:32:22]  So this group abducted the 10 and uh.
[00:32:30]  The case of my sister was one of the cases that we brought up when we filed the uh um, the case against uh, the Marcos Estate in Hawaii.

=== Wrote Plays for the Underground (09:19) ===

[00:32:46]  Yeah yeah, we will, we will definitely get to that that in a little bit.
[00:32:49]  That's the, that's the one from the 19, the early 1990s, correct?
[00:32:52]  That is right yeah um, you know for for, for you know I, I i'm not sure exactly how familiar our listeners are.
[00:33:00]  Most of our listeners are based uh, in America Canada um, but there was something around.
[00:33:05]  There was over 3 000 people who were kind of confirmed killed by the government during the martial law era correct yes uh, but I think that is uh, a very conservative uh yeah yeah, I can imagine.
[00:33:23]  Um, that's that's.
[00:33:25]  That's another thing we always ask people to keep in mind is that, like any numbers like that, especially numbers that have sort of been agreed upon in history, are usually orders of magnitude lower than they actually tend to be in reality.
[00:33:35]  So, even with all this, you still decided to go back to and join the and join the underground movement, or rejoin the underground movement.
[00:33:44]  Yes um, I I thought uh, that was the best thing to do for me under the circumstances.
[00:33:55]  Well, I knew I could, I could have, you know, chosen another path.
[00:34:00]  But everything about me said, you know uh, do what I need, I needed to do.
[00:34:10]  And I stayed in the underground again for seven, seven years uh, past the administration of president Corey, and during the term of president Fidel Ramos, in 1994, I was arrested again, uh-huh.
[00:34:34]  Well so during during, during during this period too, you were also writing plays that were being produced in Manila.
[00:34:42]  Yes, under different, uh pen names.
[00:34:46]  Ah okay, that makes more sense to me.
[00:34:49]  Now then yeah yeah yeah because, because some of these were pretty big plays too.
[00:34:53]  Yes, in fact, I was able to have one of my teleplays produced by a big television station.
[00:35:05]  I used a different, yeah, a pen name.
[00:35:09]  While you were in the underground.
[00:35:11]  Right.
[00:35:12]  That's that's incredible.
[00:35:14]  I'm curious what it is about theater that kind of, you know, in this moment you were drawn to kind of as a kind of political art.
[00:35:22]  Like what it was about that medium that seemed to be maybe the best outlet for you during this time.
[00:35:29]  In my younger days, I realized that the arts were one of the best ways by means by which we could get our message across to people.
[00:35:48]  You know, they'd rather watch plays, listen to music, listen to poetry, rather than read long drawn out manifestos.
[00:36:02]  Yes.
[00:36:04]  You know, and I sort of got attached to that kind of thinking because I knew, I learned firsthand that that was really very effective.
[00:36:16]  While in the provinces, we were doing exactly that.
[00:36:20]  You know, we were hopping from one place to another, presenting our theater to people that didn't have any high formal education.
[00:36:38]  And they would get the point.
[00:36:40]  Oh, so I wasn't aware of that, but you were actually going around with the underground, actually, you know, having people perform these plays for audiences while essentially on the run from the government.
[00:36:53]  Yes.
[00:36:56]  In the 1970s, we succeeded in forming different theater groups all over the Philippines.
[00:37:04]  So when martial law was declared, the theater groups persisted because they were far from the reach of the military in the centers of power.
[00:37:25]  So in secluded barrios, they could do theater.
[00:37:31]  That's fascinating.
[00:37:33]  Yeah, I mean, your first play, which was, I believe it's your first play, I don't know how to pronounce it in Tagalog, but Liturgy of the Masses.
[00:37:42]  And I had read that you ended up writing that because the only reading material you were allowed in prison was a Bible.
[00:37:49]  And so you read it back to back.
[00:37:52]  Yes.
[00:37:52]  Yes.
[00:37:55]  The intelligence unit that held us disallowed reading material.
[00:38:01]  So one day my sister thought the Bible would be allowed.
[00:38:06]  And she was-I can't say no to that.
[00:38:08]  Yeah, that's a famous thing.
[00:38:09]  She was right.
[00:38:10]  So I had this big King James Version illustrated Bible, and I had nothing to read but the Bible.
[00:38:22]  So I read the Bible and I became familiar with many of the parts that talked about freedom for from slaves, you know, freedom from unjust rulers and things like that.
[00:38:37]  So when I was released, I was asked by a church congregation to write a play for a forum, a religious forum that was being held in Hong Kong.
[00:38:55]  I accepted the job.
[00:38:57]  I wrote the play and I called it Pagsambang Bayan or People's Worship or Liturgy of the Masses.
[00:39:06]  And it followed the order of worship, but I used the order of worship to let the congregation, the people, talk about what was happening to them in spite of what the priest was saying, you know, the ideal situation.
[00:39:31]  And the play was a hit.
[00:39:37]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:38]  It sounds quite subversive, too.
[00:39:41]  It was.
[00:39:41]  It was subversive.
[00:39:43]  In fact, on opening night, I was completely nervous because even as I had used a pen name, at the end of the play, I was acknowledged as the playwright.
[00:40:00]  So I had to stand up and you know and wave to the audience.
[00:40:09]  And I had to step aside for some time because the director of the play got arrested.
[00:40:17]  That's right.
[00:40:18]  Together with their musical director.
[00:40:20]  So I stayed out of circulation for some time.
[00:40:25]  But it was good that my sister got some connection that told me to report to the military, submit a copy of the script, and that was it.
[00:40:40]  That was when you went underground?
[00:40:42]  No, no.
[00:40:44]  Oh, oh, I see what you're saying.
[00:40:45]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:40:47]  I had another chance, so back to the university, went on my quote-unquote Merry, Mary life, and wrote plays again.
[00:41:02]  Uh I, by the way, I entered the play in a contest and it won.
[00:41:08]  So I was encouraged.
[00:41:09]  So I was, I was encouraged.
[00:41:11]  I wrote another play, entered in in uh, better known contest, and it won again.
[00:41:21]  So I mean yeah, because you, you wrote I mean I have read your credits you've, you've written quite a few plays and run quite won quite a few contests.
[00:41:31]  You're doing a lot of this also while you're on the run from a government that had imprisoned and tortured you for multiple years, killed members of your family.
[00:41:38]  I mean, that is uh.
[00:41:40]  And here's the thing, on my third attempt, I wrote another play and uh, joined a contest that was sponsored by no less than the Cultural Center OF THE Philippines wasn't Imelda Marcos in charge of that exactly?
[00:41:56]  And it won again first prize.
[00:41:59]  Jesus Christ, I imagine it makes it a little difficult to actually accept the prizes.

=== Fading Memories, Rising Controversy (04:52) ===

[00:42:05]  Uh, if you are, if you are on the underground, maybe you can have like a proxy go for you.
[00:42:09]  Yeah, that's right anyway.
[00:42:11]  Uh, so that that led me to my, if you can call it, career.
[00:42:17]  I never realized that I was going to be some kind of a writer, a playwright, but that went on and uh yeah well well you you, you mentioned that uh, you know you were in the underground until until the 1990s.
[00:42:31]  Um, and uh, and and for those listening who aren't familiar with the history uh, Marcos and the Marcos family left the Philippines in 1986 uh, on some military, U.s.
[00:42:42]  Military helicopters given to them by, uh old friend Ronald Reagen um, and they were whisked off to Hawaii where they're greeted with lays by the governor.
[00:42:51]  After that, Core uh became president um, and there was sort of a, a return to to democracy um and and, for a little while the the, the Marcos has actually had to to stay out of the country.
[00:43:01]  I mean, I know that Ferdinand Marcos died a few years later in Hawaii.
[00:43:06]  Um, you know what?
[00:43:09]  One of the reasons that we really wanted to talk to you today is because your memory and your experience with martial law is fading um, or at least that the memory in in Philippine society is fading or is changing.
[00:43:21]  Uh, and and it's, It's a far cry from sort of the masses of people of all social classes taking to The streets to get Marcos out, to where his son has a commanding lead to become the next president.
[00:43:35]  Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who is known, I guess, sort of popularly as Bong Bong Marcos, is running for president in tandem with Duterte's, Rodrigo Duterte's daughter, Sarah.
[00:43:47]  And it looks like at least he and probably she are both favored to win their positions.
[00:43:54]  I guess my question here is: you and thousands, tens of thousands of other people, I mean, hundreds of thousands of other people in the Philippines were deeply affected by the experience of martial law.
[00:44:06]  You know, how does it have you seen sort of the historical memory of that fade over time in the wider society or shift or change or become something else?
[00:44:19]  Because to my dad, who'd spent some time in the Philippines in the 80s and had had some bad experiences with the government, even though he was just there as a tourist, he was shocked to learn that it was very likely that Ferdinand Marcos' son was going to become president.
[00:44:38]  Is it surprising to you at this point?
[00:44:44]  Both ways, Brace.
[00:44:46]  Well, first, you can say that again about memory fading.
[00:44:52]  Even me, I have been experiencing memory loss.
[00:44:58]  I couldn't anymore remember details.
[00:45:02]  But yes, I am surprised and not surprised at the same time.
[00:45:10]  I couldn't believe that this could be happening in the Philippines about the son of the dictator being able to reclaim their lost glory, so to speak.
[00:45:24]  At the same time, I also realized that they had worked for this years back, and now they are reaping the benefits of their scheme.
[00:45:36]  When you say that, what do you mean specifically?
[00:45:39]  What have the Marcoses done over the past couple decades?
[00:45:44]  First, they tried to return to the Philippines.
[00:45:49]  President Corey Aquino did not make that happen.
[00:45:54]  The next president after Aquino made that happen.
[00:46:00]  But somehow the Marcoses were able to push some more.
[00:46:05]  And eventually, the corpse of the dictator was allowed first to be transferred to Where he came from in the Ilocos region in northern Philippines.
[00:46:22]  And in all this time, the Marcos family, I think, did their assignment and slowly but surely crept into the body politic of the Philippines, you know, renewed friendship with their cronies, with politicians of the same mold,
[00:46:49]  tested the waters and ran for different positions, won and lost.

=== The Marcos Legacy (15:18) ===

[00:46:57]  And I think they also did their math.
[00:47:00]  And they knew that at this point in time, the greater number of Filipinos would no longer have any direct experience about martial law.
[00:47:13]  And they are right.
[00:47:14]  Right now, the Commission on Elections is saying that at least 57, 56, 57% of the registered voters are in the 18 to 40 age bracket, which means they never experienced martial law.
[00:47:36]  So this is the percentage of the population that is vulnerable to the false narratives, to the deception, to the lies that they had been feeding into the social media.
[00:47:53]  The social media is a great multiplier of facts as well as lies.
[00:47:59]  During my time, there was no social media.
[00:48:01]  So it was rather difficult for lies to, you know, multiply in that manner.
[00:48:11]  But now they could do it.
[00:48:13]  And they had the money, the wherewithals, so to speak, to do it because they still control the ill-gotten wealth that the government said they took from the people, from government covers.
[00:48:29]  Yeah, before this, Frays and I were watching some of the Facebook and TikTok videos that the Bong Bong's campaign had put out.
[00:48:37]  I mean, he's like a total social media sensation.
[00:48:41]  It's really remarkable and scary what he's achieved online.
[00:48:47]  And both Frace and I were talking because we were so curious about how this period in Filipino history, the years of the Marcos dictatorship and leading into and then specifically during the martial law years, how that was taught to these kids and basically how the country has treated that in the years since.
[00:49:12]  Yes, it also helped a big deal that government institutions failed to do what they were supposed to do, and that is to make sure that the lessons of history, specifically martial law, were taught, were inculcated in the school curricula.
[00:49:33]  But nothing of that sort happened.
[00:49:35]  After Marcos was kicked out of power, the goal of keeping the lessons of history alive became second, third priority in the scheme of things.
[00:49:56]  Even our Department of Education failed to make sure that textbooks in schools are accurate, you know, and depicted what really happened.
[00:50:10]  The opposite actually happened.
[00:50:13]  I tried to read three, four textbooks in high school, in the elementary grades, and what were told in the four, five pages were completely opposite of the reality.
[00:50:32]  Something like this.
[00:50:34]  In 1970, the Philippines had degenerated into chaos and turmoil.
[00:50:41]  And so by 1972, the president had to declare martial law to see to it that peace and order is absurd.
[00:50:53]  But by that very statement, you know, what do you expect?
[00:50:58]  Yeah.
[00:50:59]  And after that, what were written were, you know, the achievements of the martial law regime, you know, fantastic buildings being built, thousands of kilometers of roads, you know, bridges, hospitals.
[00:51:17]  Not even saying that these projects were, yes, created, they did happen, but the Marcoses had, you know, a big percentage of the funding, you know, that allowed these projects to be built.
[00:51:37]  Yeah, I mean, there is sort of no downplaying the fact that the Marcoses looted the Philippines.
[00:51:45]  I mean, in one of the most audacious acts of kleptocracy that I think you can really point to in the 20th century.
[00:51:53]  I mean, they really, I mean, they, I think, left the Philippines with at least $10 billion.
[00:52:01]  You know, there's sort of a famous anecdote about Imelda Marcos stuffing her children's diapers full of diamonds as they were being ushered onto helicopters.
[00:52:12]  I mean, it is, it is, these people had wealth.
[00:52:15]  You know, there's illiteracy in large parts of the country.
[00:52:19]  People live in hovels and shacks.
[00:52:20]  You know, there's, there's, there's basically huge amounts of just extreme, extreme poverty.
[00:52:27]  And they live, you know, in ways that like the Romanovs could only dream of.
[00:52:32]  And much of that money is still with them.
[00:52:36]  And that is something that I think really can't be discounted to see their rise.
[00:52:40]  I mean, I know that Bong Bong is a senator.
[00:52:44]  His sister is also a senator.
[00:52:46]  I believe Imelda Marcos, even in her twilight years, is she is some, I can't, she's like a congresswoman or something.
[00:52:55]  Yeah, which I have a feeling that she often doubt that she shows up to work much.
[00:53:01]  There's a recent documentary that came out that sort of made a splash in the U.S. called The Kingmaker about Imelda Marcos that shows her just handing out money out of the side of like this weird luxury mini bus that she's she's ushered about in.
[00:53:19]  You know, it's it's these people really, yeah, yes, they have built some hospitals.
[00:53:25]  They built towns that are named like Marcos and like Ferdinand and stuff like that.
[00:53:31]  But they, I mean, they stole a substantial amount of money from a very poor country.
[00:53:37]  I mean, they looted it.
[00:53:40]  And yeah, one of the things that's really been sort of jarring for me, you know, somebody who also obviously didn't grow up under martial law, but is of a similar age cohort to a lot of these people, is seeing people repeat this.
[00:53:52]  Like, yeah, the Philippines were in chaos in the 1970s.
[00:53:56]  And, you know, Marcos really, you know, he was like a loving paternal figure to the country.
[00:54:01]  Like he had to suffer by putting us under martial law.
[00:54:04]  Like, you know, it hurt him more than it hurt us.
[00:54:08]  And they built all of these things.
[00:54:09]  And it's really just sort of jarring to see because even a cursory reading of the history doesn't bear almost any of that out.
[00:54:16]  I mean, how does it, how does it really, you know, this is sort of a personal question, but you know, to somebody who suffered a lot during this era, you know, how does this, I guess, make you feel just with yourself when you see these things repeated and when you see this memory that you've tried to instill in people supplanted by this sort of false narrative?
[00:54:41]  I feel bad, and that is an understatement.
[00:54:46]  I was a teenager when I joined the activist movement.
[00:54:49]  I was around 23 when I was arrested and tortured.
[00:54:55]  I'm now 70 years old.
[00:54:59]  I never for the life of me imagined that I would be facing this situation wherein there's another Marcos trying to reclaim power.
[00:55:14]  And it was one Marcos, the original Marcos, that we tried to, you know, kick out of power.
[00:55:24]  So I can't find the exact words by which I could describe what I'm feeling, but the only thing that I am sure of is I had to pursue what I'm doing and never look back because this is one of the most consequential elections in my country.
[00:55:56]  The next president will be the 17th president of the Philippines.
[00:56:04]  God, I cannot imagine if it's going to be another Marcos.
[00:56:12]  So the Marcoses know that this is their last golden opportunity.
[00:56:19]  After this election, it would be a lot more difficult for them to get back, you know, to reclaim their power.
[00:56:30]  In the same manner, I say that this is an election that is of utmost importance because it could define with finality what's going to happen to people like me.
[00:56:50]  And more than that, to the generations of Filipinos that are, you know, facing the dire situation of living under a regime that has been brought to power on the wings of lies and ill-gotten wealth.
[00:57:41]  I feel like before we wrap up, I had just a couple questions about kind of these last few years with Duterte and now both Marcos and Duterte being on the ballot.
[00:57:56]  kids of both Marcos and Duterte being on the ballot.
[00:57:59]  I'm curious about the relationship between these two families.
[00:58:02]  It feels like, you know, the Filipino ruling class, these families, that it's, you see these names over and over and over again, that it's almost like every year we go on, the more consecrated these families have become in the ruling class structure.
[00:58:24]  I'm almost surprised to see the Duterte families and the Marcos families kind of aligned in some ways, considering how Duterte got his start.
[00:58:34]  But they all seem to be sort of frenemies, meaning both friends and enemies at the same time.
[00:58:40]  And I'm curious if you can kind of, for our listeners and for myself, sort of peel back some of the, you know, the mist here and give some insight into how these families work for and against each other.
[00:58:56]  Yeah, much is not written about regarding the relationship between Duterte and the Marcoses.
[00:59:05]  But here are some facts.
[00:59:09]  Duterte, Rodrigo Duterte himself admitted that the Marcoses contributed significant money to his campaign.
[00:59:22]  It was also established that of all the presidents, it was Duterte who allowed the burial of Marcos to what we call the Libingan Ngmangabayani or hero's cemetery.
[00:59:41]  Even as Duterte has started criticizing Marcos Jr. as not competent enough as into some drugs, the truth of the matter is he holds the Marcos some kind of a model.
[01:00:05]  And Duterte himself said many times that his idol is and has been and is always be Marcos, that had it not been for some minions of President Marcos, the Philippines would have prospered like some neighboring countries of the Philippines.
[01:00:32]  Beyond that, Marcos and Duterte are of the same mold.
[01:00:38]  You know, they are populist, rightist populist.
[01:00:47]  They want, they like to ride upon the popular sentiments and ram their ideas through by saying that what the Philippines needs is a leader with political will.
[01:01:06]  And people mistake, you know, tyrannical tendencies as political will.
[01:01:21]  Duterte and Marcos are of the same mold in the sense that they think that the military is the silver bullet that would solve, you know, all the problems.
[01:01:33]  Look, in the Philippines, when the pandemic happened, it was the military that Duterte called upon, you know, to lead the agency that managed the government handling of the pandemic.
[01:01:50]  You know, generals, military officials, not the medical professionals.
[01:01:58]  And so, even as Marcos might not, even as Duterte might not really like Marcos Jr. to become president because he had all along wanted his daughter to become president.

=== Red Tagging Triumph (09:24) ===

[01:02:16]  It's precious Sarah.
[01:02:17]  Yes.
[01:02:19]  Well, she probably will someday.
[01:02:21]  Oh, yeah.
[01:02:22]  Yeah, that is one scenario that's been building up in these parts about Marcos being disqualified after having been proclaimed, so that the government, the Supreme Court will have no choice but to proclaim the vice president, Sara Duterte, as president.
[01:02:49]  So it's not easy to explain the political situation in the Philippines right now.
[01:03:00]  And it will have to take some time before anyone to realize what's really happening.
[01:03:08]  But I think I'm coming from some secure position, having lived through martial law, having endured all the administrations after martial law, and having to witness the threat that is the comeback of the son of the dictator.
[01:03:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:03:35]  Well, we really appreciate you spending some time with us.
[01:03:38]  You know, you mentioned before that you have campaigned against the return of the Marcoses and martial law.
[01:03:46]  Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that's received and like and about your efforts essentially to keep this historical memory alive and to fight back against this family that it seems like has really clawed their way back into the popular consciousness?
[01:04:02]  We initiated this network called Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law in 2016.
[01:04:11]  That was when the son of the dictator attempted to become vice president.
[01:04:18]  And as everybody knows, he failed.
[01:04:20]  The current vice president won over him.
[01:04:24]  Marcos Jr. protested, said he was cheated, Lucas talking.
[01:04:32]  And so there was a recount of the votes.
[01:04:35]  And the recounts of the vote further increased the vote of the vice presid of a vice president.
[01:04:42]  Last thing you want to happen if you do it a recount.
[01:04:47]  Anyway, so in 2016, we formed Karma and we never stopped.
[01:04:54]  I feel we contributed some time in the triumph of the vice president and we pursued our goal of touching base with survivors of martial law, victims of human rights violations all over the Philippines.
[01:05:16]  So right now we have what I may call chapters in the various regions of the Philippines carrying the same name, Karma.
[01:05:28]  We are a self-help network.
[01:05:31]  We don't have any institutional support.
[01:05:34]  This is a completely volunteer work.
[01:05:39]  And it inspires us that right now the youth have started to join Karma.
[01:05:47]  When we started, we were, you know, the elderlies, you know, the tribe that is fast vanishing.
[01:05:57]  But now the youth have joined us.
[01:05:59]  So we have karma members who are millennials and what other names you append to.
[01:06:04]  Gen Z is the one you're looking for.
[01:06:05]  Those are the really crazy ones.
[01:06:07]  Oh, yeah.
[01:06:07]  Okay.
[01:06:08]  Okay.
[01:06:09]  And I think it's going to be difficult for any force to defeat something like Karma, which is an idea.
[01:06:19]  It could only be defeated by a better idea.
[01:06:23]  And what better idea than to keep alive the memories of resistance and tell people about what really happened?
[01:06:36]  So the first time we established Karma, it was campaign against the return of the Marcoses to Malacanyang.
[01:06:43]  Eventually, we changed it to martial law because we realized that it was not only the comeback of the Marcoses, which is a real threat, it is the comeback of martial law as well.
[01:07:01]  Because in the Philippines, even as Duterte has not declared martial law officially, there is, in fact, a de facto martial law that's been existing in the Philippines after Duterte became president.
[01:07:15]  You know, the best practices, or some people say worst, practices of martial law had been happening, being observed by the military.
[01:07:25]  Extrajudicial killings, abductions, arrest of people on tramped up charges.
[01:07:33]  These are all practices of martial law that have been carried on to this day.
[01:07:39]  And they've even expanded on some of the red tagging and stuff like that.
[01:07:43]  Brandon was on the show.
[01:07:44]  During my time, it was not called red tagging, but now it's called red tagging, but essentially the same practice.
[01:07:53]  And oh, it's really Marcos Jr. has some genius minds behind the campaign.
[01:08:05]  They are able to ride upon the situation.
[01:08:10]  For instance, this thing about negative campaigning, you must have heard about it.
[01:08:16]  The son of the dictator has refused to join debates because he said he would not want something that would, you know, divide the people some more.
[01:08:31]  So he would not answer accusations that already belong to the past.
[01:08:41]  So that's negative campaigning for him.
[01:08:44]  That's very convenient and self-serving, because it would mean him not being forced to answer the difficult questions about martial law and his role in the perpetuation of the false narratives and their ability to keep their ill-gotten
[01:09:14]  way.
[01:09:14]  wealth.
[01:09:15]  It must be remembered that Marcos Jr. The principal administrator and executioner of the Marcos estate.
[01:09:28]  Yeah, and sort of to close us out here, you know, you mentioned it, and sort of piggybacking off of what you just said there is that you were actually part of the lawsuit in the 90s against him in the USA.
[01:09:40]  Can you tell us a little bit about that and we can kind of close out from there?
[01:09:45]  Yes.
[01:09:49]  The late attorney, the late lawyer Kapulong, met with many of us and decided that we filed a case against the Marcos estate.
[01:10:05]  And since the Marcoses happened to be in Hawaii, we filed a case in Hawaii.
[01:10:10]  And long story short, we won the case.
[01:10:16]  And it is on record that the Marcos estate is duty bound to indemnify the victims of martial law.
[01:10:29]  So it has been proven in a court that what we had been saying that happened in the Philippines did happen.
[01:10:40]  On top of that, there's this other law in the Philippines that was passed by our legislature indemnifying, recognizing, and identifying victims of human rights violations during the time of President Marcos.
[01:10:57]  So now we have two official recorded documents that testify to the veracity of what we've been saying all along.
[01:11:08]  These are things that Marcos Jr. cannot for the life of him say are falsehoods.
[01:11:18]  Yeah.
[01:11:20]  Yeah.
[01:11:22]  I know, you know, as you mentioned, he prefers generally to just avoid the question or to have very friendly interviews where he plays up what he says are the positive aspects of it.
[01:11:33]  Well, it's been an honor to have you on.
[01:11:38]  It's been really great to speak with you.

=== The Way the Mind Works (02:27) ===

[01:11:40]  Is there anything else you'd like to say before we close out tonight?
[01:11:43]  Or this morning, rather, for you?
[01:11:47]  I think I've said enough.
[01:11:53]  I know I must have missed something.
[01:11:57]  That's the way the mind of an elderly works right now.
[01:12:04]  Yes, but thank you too for asking me, asking me to participate in your project.
[01:12:10]  No, thank you so much.
[01:12:12]  It sure is going to help us in our crusade.
[01:12:16]  Thank you so much.
[01:12:18]  And yeah, we'll talk to you hopefully soon.
[01:12:42]  Well, I hope that our listeners couldn't tell how insanely nervous I was that entire time.
[01:12:47]  Well, if the listeners couldn't, one, Bryce just confirmed it, and two, I could.
[01:12:52]  Yeah, I was like, sir, could you, yeah, that's why it was cute.
[01:12:58]  I always get like that.
[01:13:00]  But yeah, I mean, what a man.
[01:13:03]  We will, you know, we'll link to some organizations and some further reading if people are interested, as well as some links to his plays and films.
[01:13:15]  I think that we can provide a lot more information in our notes for this episode.
[01:13:21]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:13:22]  Yeah, I'm also, I'm reading a book by because people always are like, book, look, I want to read a book, which is obviously not true because you listen to podcasts.
[01:13:31]  But the Sterling Seagraves book on the Marcos dynasty is really good.
[01:13:35]  And also where I actually meant to ask this during the interview, but where a famous event happened during the Dilman Commune, which is basically a student takeover and revolt that led to some actual real fighting and deaths at the University of the Philippines.
[01:13:54]  Students actually broadcast audio of President Marcos begging an American actress for oral sex and played that on a loop on the radio, which is incredible.

=== Students Broadcast Audio Loop (00:28) ===

[01:14:08]  Very cool.
[01:14:09]  Of 70 strolling.
[01:14:11]  If you have a tape of anyone in power doing that, you got to put it on the radio.
[01:14:17]  That's a tape you got to roll.
[01:14:19]  Absolutely.
[01:14:20]  And a loop.
[01:14:21]  Well, with that being said, if one exists of me, please do not play it.
[01:14:25]  And that being said, my name is Bryce.
[01:14:27]  And I'm Liz.
[01:14:28]  We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:14:31]  And the podcast is called Liz.
[01:14:34]  It's called Truan.
[01:14:35]  And we'll see you next time.